Sermon Preached at St. Mark's Episcopal Church
Epiphany 2A: Isaiah 49:1-7 and 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
While many
of us like to poke fun at St. Paul for his run on sentences seemingly joined
together more by semi-colon than by topic and while others like to dismiss Paul
out of hand for the apparent sexism in his letters, I think we serve ourselves
well to listen to his words with open minds and open hearts – not uncritically,
but not dismissively either (yes, that was one sentence - modeled after Paul). Today’s
second reading comes from the introduction of one of Paul’s letters to the
church in Corinth. It is an introduction
filled with praise for the good people of Corinth – they are “sanctified in
Christ Jesus” they are “called to be saints,” they are “in every way . . .
enriched in [Christ Jesus], in speech and knowledge of every kind” and they “are
not lacking in any spiritual gift.”[1] That’s so typical of Paul – offering words of
encouragement to the early Church, extending those words of encouragement to
you and to me today.
But I want
to put Paul’s praise and encouragement into a larger context. The church in Corinth was struggling. One of the biggest challenges was the economic disparity among its members.[2] Only those with money could decide matters in
court. Only those with homes and staff large enough could host the church and
provide a place for its celebration of the Lord’s supper – church buildings did
not yet exist. And, only those who were
wealthy could arrive at dinners early enough to eat the best food and get drunk
before the other, less fortunate ones could arrive.[3] And these struggles – between the haves and
the have nots, between rich and poor – were the reason for Paul’s letter. So, although the introduction is filled with
praise and encouragement, the letter goes on to offer a pretty severe critique
and a persuasive argument to shape up and to live according to the faith they
profess with their lips and the faith God has placed in their hearts.
If we are
to hear Paul’s words today, we must be willing to hear both the good – praise and
a encouragement – and the bad – critique and invitation to change. By reminding the Corinthians that they are “sanctified
in Christ Jesus” and “called to be saints,” by telling them, “you are not lacking in any
spiritual gift,” he is reminding them that they have everything they need
within themselves to do the right thing.
Because those very gifts come not from human hands but from Christ
Jesus. God has given them – and us –
everything we need to do God’s will.
And if
ever there was a time when our world needs the Church to do God’s will it is
now. Many mainline churches – Presbyterian,
Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalians – have spent the last decades deeply mired in
debates on women’s ordination and the standing of persons in our communities based
on sexual orientation and sexual identity.
And please do not misunderstand me, because I think these are important
issues and issues which are very much the purview of the churches to figure
out. BUT, while we have been struggling with these
issues of “who’s in” and “who’s out,” the Religious Right has taken the opportunity
to claim the public stage. Emerging in
the late 1970s , the Christian Right – really a group of loosely networked
political actors, religious organizations and political lobbyists – made a broad-based
religious appeal to Americans that emphasized so-called traditional family
values, championed free-market economics and criticized secular trends in
American culture. There was a temporary
decline of the Religious Right in the late 1980s and into the 90s but a loud
minority within the Religious Right persisted and continues to shape policy discussions,
drive voter turnout and influence religious and political life in the United
States. The movement, not surprisingly
based on its agenda, mostly mobilized white, evangelical and fundamentalist
Christians.[4]
And while they were taking up space on the airwaves, literally broadcasting
their voice across America, most of the mainline denominations – ours included
- were fighting internal battles and, as a result, largely absent from the public arena. Our battles may not have been that
of the church in Corinth – rich vs. poor; but, like the early church in
Corinth, our battles have kept us so occupied that we have a tendency to forget who
we are and whose we are, a tendency to forget that we are “sanctified in Christ
Jesus,” “called to be saints” and “not lacking in any spiritual gift.”
And so today
is our moment. Today, it is time for us to wake up. There is
perhaps no better weekend than the one in which we celebrate the life and work
of Martin Luther King, Jr. – no better weekend to remind ourselves to heed Paul’s
call to remember that we are bound together in Christ for a purpose. That we are bound together in Christ, with every spiritual gift we need and, because of this we have what we need to work alongside God. And more than simply recognizing the truth of
this, we are living in a time when the Church has a responsibility to act on
that truth – to proclaim with our lives what we profess with our lips - to
stand up to and against the powers that threaten to tear us apart.
Our
catechism tells us that the Church’s mission is “to restore all people to unity
with God and each other in Christ” by pursuing “its mission as it prays and
worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.”[5] We are
living in a time when the Church is especially called to live fully into this
mission. For when the ruler of any
nation stands before his or her people and declares – by word or by action - that
some people inherently have more dignity than others or when the ruler of any
nation declares – by word or by action - that some groups of peoples because of
their ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity or
socio-economic status are to be served a justice that is no justice and a peace
that is no peace, then the Church has an obligation to stand up to that ruler
in the name of the traditional Christian values that we espouse – namely those values we profess at our baptism.
Now,
because I have been speaking of the Church and some may hear that as me
speaking of the small ‘c’ institutional church, I want to be clear that the
Church of which I speak is the one which our catechism tells us is “the Body of
which Jesus Christ is the Head and of which all baptized persons are members”–
in other words, the Church of which I speak is us.[6] And so we are the ones who must be vigilant
and stand up – as often as it takes and for as long as it takes – to hold our
leaders accountable, to shelter, comfort and protect those who are vulnerable, to
serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people,
to respect the dignity of every human being.[7] As Shay Craig, our preacher last week
reminded us, this “means no exceptions.”
In our
first reading today, the prophet Isaiah writes that he was called by God before
he was born, while he was still in his mother’s womb.[8] And yet, the prophet writes, he did
not do God’s purpose, having spent his “strength for nothing and vanity.”[9] And
God replies, “maybe so, but today is the day.
Today is the day that I remind you of the purpose for which I called you
– to ‘give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the
end of the earth.’” [10]
My
brothers and sisters, today is our moment. Today is the day. We may havmove those conversations into the community and into our world. We must join with our brothers and sisters across
denominations and be the light that God has called us to be from before the
beginning of time. Now – more than ever before in many of our life times – we
must proclaim by word and example the
Good News of God in Christ. And we need
to get noticed. We need to get
loud. We need to go out into the streets,
into the public square. We need to stand
before our elected representatives. We
need to be the Church. We must be
the Church together – bound together in Christ.
And we can do this.
Because we “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” and we have been “in
every way. . . enriched in [Christ Jesus], in speech and knowledge of every
kind.”[11]
[1] 1
Corinthians 1:2, 5, 7.
[2] J.
Paul Sampley, “The First Letter to the Corinthians: Introduction, Commentary,
and Reflections,” The New Interpreter’s
Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume 10 (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 2002), 777.
[3] Ibid.
[4]
Michael J. McVicar, “The Religious Right inAmerica,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia:
Religion, Oxford University Press, 2017),
accessed January 14, 2017.
[5]
Book of Common Prayer, 854-5.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.,
305.
[8] Isaiah
49:1b.
[9] Isaiah
49:4.
[10] Isaiah
49:6b.
[11] 1
Corinthians 1:5, 7a.
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